Billy The Artist is now providing something fun and creative to the wine business… A double wine bag for starters, but a whole lot more, too. You can check out Planet Random Designs for more details on the company carrying his designs.

Billy the Artist is a designer, commercial artist, and painter who works out of New York City, where his East Village studio is home base for his highly successful creative and commercial enterprises. Billy thrives on the artistic power of the essential American city and its vibrant art scene. Author of a style he dubs “Urban Primitive Pop,” Billy makes intricate, patterned work that hums with joy and celebration of the human spirit. Beloved in the world of fine art as well as the commercial realm, Billy saves time for public art projects and philanthropic efforts. Clients include Swatch, MTV, Mountain Dew, Hyundai, Suzuki, Microsoft, The Nescafe Champs Snowboarding Championships and the musical RENT to name a few.

HISTORY with Swatch… When my sister Merry was living and playing in Port Washington, Long Island (in the 80s), she had a friend Don Galliers. The Swiss came to Don and said (paraphrasing), “We know how to make watches and you know how to market. How about we make a watch, call it Swatch, and you help market it?” Needless to say, in those early years, I had a lot of Swatches. I also did a bit of sailing in and around Port Washington on Don’s boat, and also up the East River into Manhattan.

So now, I have my own Billy The Artist wine bag, one degree of separation for us from Swatch. When it arrived, I even thought of taking it with me to places when wine wouldn’t even be traveling with me, because I love this bag as a fashion statement…

I love street art. During my last trip to Puerto Rico, I did a photo collection of Puerto Rican street art… tagging included… because of its raw statements. Billy the Artist is far from raw, but his energy comes from that same guttural, mural place…

The tag on the bag… Create Your own Reality…

Yeah, Billy, I’ve been doing that for a long time now. Welcome to my world.

Inside the bag’s tag helps me a lot. I can’t say this better, but want to keep the tag for those days when someone says, “I love your bag!”

Really, what do you say about an artist whose work has been shown at Forbes Gallery (NYC), Art Basel Miami, Foxx Gallery Zurich and many other venues; who painted a 40′ mural in front of 30,000 people with a raging soundtrack and 400 projections of his work on the walls of the Piazza San Marco at the Venice Biennale; who has designed watches for Swatch, painted for MTV, Gibson guitars and murals for the London and Broadway productions of RENT, and who paints murals of hope and inspiration for children’s hospitals all over the world?

“Thanks”… that’s what I have to say. Thanks, Billy The Artist, for jazzing up my world more than a bit. I love his new products, including this wine bag. His work reminds me of how I discovered Peter Maxx for myself in the 60s, and have never been the same since. BTA, indeed….